A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.

Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.

In great matters, men behave as they are expected to; in little ones, as they would naturally

Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.

There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.

All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.

Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.